A Seminar Dedicated to Munshi Premchand
 
On
 
“Birds of A Feather Flock Together:” What Scientists Know Makes Them “Surdas” To What They Don't Know
 
 By
 
 Ramadhar Singh, PhD (Purdue)
 Distinguished University Professor, Ahmedabad University
 
 
Date: Wednesday, 25 August 2021

Time: 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM (IST)

Venue: To Be Conducted In Hybrid Mode In 004, SAS Building And Zoom


Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/96824846607?pwd=dEozc3F5amR1VDhIWFovUkxXMUtxQT09

Meeting ID: 968 2484 6607
Passcode: 022961
 
 
Abstract

It is widely believed that birds of a feather flock together [चोर-चोर मौसेरे भाई। एक ही थैली के चट्टे बट्टे।]. Social psychologists supported such proverbs by manipulating attitude similarity between two persons at Time 1 (a cause) and measuring attraction between them at Time 2 (an effect). As expected, the two strangers were more attracted toward each other when they had similar rather than dissimilar attitudes. In this lecture, it will be shown that the positive causal relation between attitude similarity and interpersonal attraction is not as simple as it seems to be. The initially proposed single mechanism-based explanations (i.e., positive affect, respect for, inferred attraction of the partner, trust in the partner, or validation of one’s views by similar others) achieved no more than merely portraying the investigators as “blind” [सूरदास] to what they hadn’t known. Considering some of these mechanisms together as parallel processes at the next stage did not illustrate foresight either. The explanation appeared satisfactory only when the mechanisms considered together were treated as serial processes (i.e., one leads to another but not vice versa). Specifically, attitude similarity creates attraction by triggering latent sequential processes of Validation → Positive affect → Respect → Inferred attraction → Trust. Ideas of some of these mechanisms of similarity-attraction from stories and novels by Hindi writer Munshi Premchand (1880-1936) will be cited. Of the five mechanisms, not only the two early occurring processes of validation and positive affect but also the two last occurring processes of inferred attraction and trust are self-serving. Apparently, then, the couplet of Goswami Tulsidas (1633/1974) correctly represented the motive underlying relationship formation much earlier than any psychological finding: “सुर नर मुनि सब कै यह रीति। स्वारथ लागि करहिं सब प्रीति” (Hari, 1974, p. 52).
 
About the Speaker
 
Ramadhar Singh is a Distinguished University Professor, Ahmedabad University. He has been a Fellow of American Psychological Association (APA), Association for Psychological Science (APS), British Psychological Society (BPS), Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), and Singapore Psychological Society (SPS) since 1993 and of NAoP (India) since 2008. The APS lists only him among the Faces and Minds of Psychological Science from India. The IIM Indore recently bestowed on him its first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Research: https://www.iimidr.ac.in/news-events/iim-indore-presents-the-maiden-lifetime-achievement-award-for-excellence-in-research-to-ramadhar-singh/